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George Boole: Selected manuscripts on logic and its philosophy. Ed. by Ivor Grattan-Guinness and Gérard Bornet. (English) Zbl 0877.03003

Science Networks. Historical Studies. 20. Basel: Birkhäuser. lxiv, 236 p. (1997).
George Boole did not stop working on logic after having published his seminal “An investigation of the laws of thought” (1854). His aim was to write a philosophical complement to his writings in the algebra of logic, but he died before he was able to finish it. All this was known already to his contemporaries, but only bits and pieces from his logical manuscripts have been published up to now, although leading authorities like Augustus De Morgan, Bertrand Russell, Philip E.B. Jourdain and Louis Couturat were involved in attempts to publish Boole’s logical Nachlass. This state comes now to an end with the scholarly edition by Ivor Grattan-Guinness and Gérard Bornet. The editors have compiled a selection of some 40 scattered and chronologically unclear textual universe” (p. xxv).
The material is organized in a chronological way in four parts and XVII chapters. Part A contains texts on the nature and philosophy of logic, written in the time between the publication of “The mathematical analysis of logic” (1847) and “The laws of thought” (1854). Part B includes considerations on the philosophical interpretation of a theory of logic, written after “ The laws of thought”. In part C the manuscripts intended for the sequel to “The laws of thought” are published. The concluding part D contains miscellaneous writings including some letters from the correspondences between Boole and Arthur Cayley, John William Lubbock and John Penrose. The first-mentioned correspondence presents an interesting debate in which Boole attempted to convince Cayley of his interpretations of some symbolic expressions used in “The mathematical analysis of logic”.
The material is accompanied by two essays by the editors. In “Boole’s quest for the foundations of his logic” (pp. xiii–xlvii) Grattan-Guinness gives an overall introduction to the edition, containing readable information on Boole’s life and career, the fate of his Nachlass, the organisation of the manuscripts, and considerations on the different stages of development of Boole’s logic and its place in the history of logic. In his “Boole’s psychologism as a reception problem” (pp. xlvii–lviii) Bornet relates Boole’s “psychologism” to the later (especially German) discussion on “psychologism” in logic as released, e.g., by Gottlob Frege’s criticism on contemporary German philosophers. Bornet comes to the result that Boole has to be exonerated from Frege’s criticism, and that his special sort of psychologism has to be seen in a relation to his conception of logic as a science.
The volume is closed by textual notes and indices of names and subjects. The edition does not only end an unbearable state in the history of logic, but gives also an excellent scholarly example of mastering and presenting manuscript sources.

MSC:

03-03 History of mathematical logic and foundations
01A75 Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics
01-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to history and biography
00A30 Philosophy of mathematics
01A55 History of mathematics in the 19th century
01A70 Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
03A05 Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations
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